She made a sound like a laugh but the expression on her face showed she was far from amused. ‘This is all about keeping your name out of the press.’ She took a step back and hugged her arms across her chest. ‘If I sign this contract then I am effectively gagged—you can divorce me on a whim and banish me from Dom’s life and there would be nothing I could do about it.’
‘Palvettis do not divorce.’
‘Forgive me if I’m unable to take anything you say at face value.’
‘There has been only one divorce in my family since the business was formed.’ He fought the anger building inside him. He knew that gaining her trust was something he would have to work on but her attitude still bit. ‘That divorce came this close...’ he put a thumb and forefinger together ‘...to destroying everything. Not one Palvetti has married since without a cast-iron pre-nuptial agreement. We protect ourselves. I don’t believe in divorce but this contract protects me and my nephew if you choose to divorce me, and it protects you too—it provides you with ten million euros for every year of our marriage.’
‘That’s not protection!’ she cried, throwing her hands in the air. ‘I don’t care about the money, I care about Dom. He belongs with me and you know it.’
Alessio gritted his teeth and ran a hand through his hair. ‘Dom belongs here in Milan. The business could one day be his. We’re his family.’
‘I’m his family.’
He looked her in the eye. ‘You’re not blood.’
‘How dare you?’ Her face drained of colour but then she straightened and paced towards him, the anger coming off her almost a visual wave. ‘Caroline and I were foster sisters from when we were both still in primary school. We thought of ourselves as real sisters and I loved her. Dom’s lived with me since his birth—I was there at his birth. I changed his first nappy. I gave him his first bottle. I held Caroline in my arms when she took her last breath and I promised her that I would always protect him.’
Now she stood before him, rising on her toes to eyeball him. ‘I might not share the same blood as Dom, but I love him more than life itself, so don’t you ever say I disqualify from being his family just because I don’t share his blood.’
He stared into the furious, beautiful face and felt the strangest compression in his chest.
When he’d first discovered a young woman had guardianship of his nephew he’d assumed Domenico had chosen her out of spite for his family. It was unthinkable to give custody of a child to a stranger when there was blood family willing and able to take him.
His investigators had shown Beth and Caroline had shared a flat before Caroline’s marriage to Domenico, and that Caroline had moved back into that flat after his death, but he’d had no idea their history went back such a long way or that they’d been foster sisters.
No wonder Beth had such deep, protective feelings for his nephew.
Instinct had him place a hand to her cheek. It was the first time he’d touched her since their dance.
Her eyes widened and she seemed to freeze.
‘Bella, I understand you love Dom, but it doesn’t change that he’s a Palvetti by blood and he belongs here. If you want what’s best for him then you must see that.’ He rubbed a thumb down the length of her cheekbone. Even the finest silk could not feel so good.
She shivered. The movement was so slight he would have missed it had he not been paying such close attention.
He brought his face closer to hers, catching her scent, welcoming its dive into his senses and its settling into his bloodstream.
Marriage to a woman who didn’t elicit his desire was unthinkable and Beth elicited it in a way he had never experienced before. There was a charge between them that buzzed through his skin to his veins.
He felt another quiver escape her but her eyes remained unblinking on his.
‘I don’t know what poison my brother filled your head with about me and nor do I want to know. I have enough bad feelings towards him without adding to it and any defence I give will be nothing but meaningless words. But I promise you this. I will be a good husband to you.’
Her voice when she finally spoke hardly rose above a whisper. ‘But you get all the power.’
‘I am not marrying you on a whim.’ He moved his hand round the back of her hair and splayed his fingers through the silky strands, watching the colour stain her cheeks. ‘I have gone to great lengths to ensure your suitability but even if I am proved wrong I will never divorce you.’
Her eyes continued to bore into him, unblinking, but her voice gained in strength. ‘Then prove it by giving me custody of Dom if you do. Make it fair. You’re taking everything else—give me that one small comfort for my own peace of mind.’
He stared back hard. Trust and respect needed to be built between them and what she asked was not unreasonable.
He inhaled through his nostrils, filling his greedy lungs with more of her scent, and nodded. ‘Va bene.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means okay. I will get my lawyer to change that clause.’
Her chest rose. ‘If you divorce me I get custody of Dom?’
‘Si. Yes. But if you divorce me, I get custody of him.’
Finally, the chocolate eyes blinked. He only realised how tightly she’d been holding herself when her shoulders loosened almost imperceptibly.
As if he knew his future had been decided in that moment, Dom stirred and made a sound like a smothered wail.
The sound cut through the atmosphere between them like a bursting balloon.
Beth blinked again and stepped back, out of his reach, her gaze now on the floor. Fresh colour crawled over her face and she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
Dom gave another wail.
Alessio, anticipating the screams that were sure to follow the child’s awakening, made himself scarce.
* * *
Later, when they were with his lawyer and going through the finer details of the contract, Alessio spotted something on his shirt. He plucked it with his fingers. It was a long, dark hair.
He looked from the hair to the woman it belonged to, her head bowed with concentration, and thrilled to know that in three short days that glorious hair would be spilled over his pillow.
Her eyes suddenly looked up from the contract and met his gaze and he felt that charge pulse between them again.
Colour suffused her cheeks and she hastily dropped her gaze back to the document.
He smothered a smile.
It wouldn’t be only his pillow that hair spilled over. It would be him too.
CHAPTER SIX
MIRANDA ARRIVED EARLY the next morning. Beth’s relief at her arrival was heartfelt. She hardly knew the nanny but her presence in the sprawling villa soothed her, made her think, probably wrongly, that she had an ally in this new life of hers.
Her first night under Alessio’s roof had been awful. It had taken hours to fall asleep, her mind a whirl of thoughts and fears. When she’d awoken to Dom’s babbling from his cot, she’d fortified herself with the strength she’d found when she’d signed that damnable contract.
She was here. This was going to be her life. Moping around or letting anger fester would not solve or change anything. If she was making this commitment then she owed it to Dom and herself to make the best of it.
Beth was good at starting over. She’d done it when her parents had died and she’d had to move fifty miles away from everything she’d ever known. That distance had felt huge.
She’d started over again too when she’d moved to London with Caroline: eighteen years old and armed with nothing but a small bag of clothing and enough money saved from her Saturday job to rent a room in a hostel. She’d made the best of it and within a year had earned enough to put down a deposit on the flat that she would now have to give up.
She thought of that small bag of clothing when
Alessio handed her a credit card before he left for work and told her to buy herself a new wardrobe of clothes and whatever else she needed.
As she was already out of clean clothes, this was one order she was not going to argue with. With the nanny in situ taking care of Dom, a member of Alessio’s household staff drove her to Via Montenapoleone.
After a year of frugality—buying clothes only when absolutely necessary and even then making her purchases in charity shops—to suddenly find herself in a street packed with designer stores and boutiques was overwhelming.
She spent more on clothes in her first two hours there than she had spent in her entire life but there was little enjoyment. She hadn’t known when she’d packed the faded jeans and simple top, spare clothing in case Dom was sick on her, that she would wear them on the first major shopping expedition of her life or that she would feel so shabby in them.
There was no escaping the presence of the man who had tricked his way into her life and brought her here either.
After a quick break for lunch, she wandered around the beauty department of one the most exclusive designer shops and stumbled on a Palvetti concession staffed by an ethereal beauty. There were no price tags on any of the scents displayed in packaging so beautiful she guessed it must cost as much as the scents themselves to produce.
Curiosity made her spray her wrists with one of the perfumes. She sniffed and sighed with pleasure at the wonderful aroma filling her senses. If it had been any other brand she would have added it to her purchases with the crème bath and shower gel of the same scent.
After that, she found she kept sniffing her wrist.
Later, she found a Palvetti jewellery store tucked away discreetly in a side street and found herself blown away by the beauty and craftsmanship of the items. No wonder their jewellery was so coveted. As with their perfumes, there were no price tags, and she felt too self-conscious at her shabbiness to ask.
Leaving the jewellers, she went off to buy a load of mercifully guilt-free clothes and toys for Dom.
Then it was time to make her final purchase. An outfit to marry in.
She chose the first suitable dress she came across and tried not to think too hard that in only two days she would wear it and exchange her vows with Alessio.
In two nights, she would share his bed.
She squeezed her eyes shut and tried, again, to push the thought from her mind. If she let it settle...
In defiance of herself, in defiance of the man forcing this life on her, she bought another pair of shoes.
Laden with designer bags, she returned to the villa and went straight to the nursery. Miranda helped her put all of Dom’s new purchases away then went off for her dinner while Beth gave him a bath. Bath time had always been a favourite part of Dom’s routine, ending with snuggles on the sofa, a bottle of his formula milk and a book.
She’d just taken him out of the bath and wrapped him in a towel on the change mat when she heard a noise in the nursery. From her vantage point on the bathroom floor, she called out, ‘Miranda, do you know where Dom’s tractor book is? It was in his change bag but I don’t remember seeing it earlier.’
Beth’s heart slammed when the figure that appeared in the bathroom doorway was the looming figure of Alessio rather than the kindly nanny.
‘I don’t know anything about a tractor book but Miranda will be up in a few minutes. She’s making Dom’s milk,’ he said drolly.
She stared up at him for a moment, hot blood whooshing in her head, then hurriedly reached for a nappy. Hell’s bells, her hands were shaking.
She’d thought she had a few more hours free of him.
‘How has your day been?’ he asked.
‘Expensive.’ It was all she could get out of her tightened throat. One glimpse of him and her equilibrium went to pieces.
Alessio watched his nephew grab hold of his foot and try and shove it in his mouth.
Beth’s handling of him was masterful. She put the nappy on the fidgety child and fastened it expertly in seconds.
‘Did you get everything you need?’ he asked.
She nodded and grabbed something he recognised as an all-in-one baby’s sleep-suit neatly laid on the bathroom chair beside her.
Alessio found it fascinating to watch her manipulate Dom into it. He’d never seen a baby be dressed before. It was far more complicated than he would have supposed, mostly on account of Dom’s wriggling limbs, but her pretty hands managed it deftly.
‘What did you want the book for?’
‘To read to him.’ Her fingers now worked on the poppers of the sleep-suit.
‘He likes being read to?’ he asked dubiously.
‘It’s part of his bedtime routine.’
‘Can he understand the words?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Then why bother?’
‘Because it’s soothing for him. Children are never too young to discover their love of words.’ With Dom now dressed, she got to her feet and scooped him up. ‘Can you take him while I look for the book, please?’
‘Me?’ He’d never held a child in his life. That was what nannies and other childcare workers were for.
She gave him a look that showed how unimpressed she was and thrust his nephew forward to him.
‘How do I hold him?’
‘Upright is usually the best way.’ Was that amusement he heard in her voice? ‘His neck doesn’t need supporting any more so, as long as you don’t drop him, you won’t break him... Don’t drop him.’
Alessio took the child from her, holding him around the waist and raising him up to look at his beaming face as he carried him from the bathroom into the nursery.
The little legs kicked out as if Dom were riding an imaginary bike, the chubby face tilting from side to side.
When he sat down on the armchair, his nephew placed his feet on Alessio’s lap and immediately started bouncing.
He laughed. Dom laughed too, his bright-blue eyes shining.
Domenico had had blue eyes.
Domenico would never hold his son on his lap...
The thought made his heart clench so tightly he almost doubled over with the pain from it.
He looked at Beth, on her hands and knees going through the dresser drawers, and his heart clenched even tighter.
Alessio’s mother had been a wonderful woman but, like all Palvetti women, not in the slightest bit maternal. It was the way things had to be, he’d always accepted that, and it had never bothered him the way it had his brother. The mundane task of raising children had been taken by nannies, the parents there to guide them into being hard working, conscientious young people able to step up and take their place in the family business.
Beth had the hard working and conscientious traits mastered but she also had a huge maternal streak running through her. Where had that come from? Raising Dom? Or an influence from her own upbringing?
He remembered the glimmer of pain he’d seen in her eyes when she’d told him she’d lost her own parents. He knew nothing about their deaths.
There was so much to discover about the woman he was marrying.
She pulled a small square book out of the bottom drawer. ‘Found it!’
She scrambled to her feet and walked over to lift Dom from Alessio’s lap. As she did so, a lock of her loose hair brushed against his cheek.
A hand he had no control of reached out and gripped her waist.
She sucked in a breath that stilled on her lips. Frozen for long moments, her gaze slowly dropped down to meet his.
Ages passed where all they did was stare into each other’s eyes.
He took in the cheeks heightened with colour, the parted lips...
Awareness shot through him. Awareness for this delectable creature that in two short days would be his.
He forced a deep breath into his lung
s and, keeping his hand on her waist, rose to his feet.
Stepping so close that the tip of her breast brushed against his chest, he breathed in the scent of her hair and was assailed with thoughts of marshmallows.
The tiniest quiver escaped from her.
He stepped back and placed his thumb on lips as plump and delicious as the marshmallows her hair smelt of.
Her wide eyes stayed locked on his.
Were it not for the child in her arms it would be his mouth on those lips. And she would be in his arms.
He dropped his thumb from the mouth he ached to devour and stepped away from temptation.
‘I will see you at dinner, bella,’ he murmured.
She blinked rapidly then gave the briefest of nods in acknowledgement.
As Alessio strode down the corridor to his room, willing the ache in his loins to ease just a little so as to become bearable, he thought their wedding night couldn’t come soon enough.
The anticipation might just kill him.
* * *
Beth inhaled the new scents that filled the night air as she walked the path towards Alessio’s lake. Water shimmered beneath the moonlight as far as the eye could see, and a small white cottage stood to the left of the lake at the top of the path which she hadn’t noticed before. Not that there had been much time for exploring. The two nights and three days she’d already spent under Alessio’s roof had slipped away as if time had been turbo-charged.
Since he’d walked in on Dom’s bedtime routine, she’d seen little of him.
His absence had been in body only.
He was never far from her mind.
She couldn’t stop thinking about him. Everything she did, everywhere she went, his face haunted her like a spectre.
The times when she was with him were worse.
She’d become aware of his every movement. When they’d shared their evening meals she’d been aware of his every sip of wine, every slice of his knife, the movement of his throat when he’d swallowed his food...
Tonight it had got so bad that she’d refused any dessert, made the excuse that she was tired and retired to her bedroom early.
A Cinderella To Secure His Heir (Cinderella Seductions Book 1) Page 6
